Lifetime Products Inc.

The challenge: Manual processes impeding innovation and advancement

Since “inventing the first basketball hoop that could be adjusted in seconds and picked up at any retailer all in one box” in 1986, Lifetime Products has been all about innovation. Its folding tables and chairs, playsets, coolers, and other products can be found in most every backyard, schoolyard, and sporting event.

Lifetime’s unyielding dedication to innovation extends to its human resources, where it focuses on up-skilling and training individual staff members, and concurrently furthers an ongoing rebalancing of its workforce, always providing team members with ample opportunities to do more — for themselves, for customers, and for the company. And this project had to reflect those values: “One of our major deployment ROI initiatives was to ensure professional growth for our employees,” said John Bowden, CIO at Lifetime.

After making the move to Dynamics 365 a few years back (with help from Real Dynamics, an Argano company), Lifetime was seeing success across multiple workflows. But it was when Lifetime added Agentic AI (autonomous agents) that the company found the complete set of tools to both serve its most pressing business needs and concurrently help equip staff to expand their skill sets and become cornerstones of the company.

The solution: Dynamics, Agentic AI, and the pillars of the Microsoft Stack

Like most successful transformations, designing and delivering solutions was an iterative process. Step one took place about a decade ago when Argano facilitated migration from AX to Microsoft Dynamics 365. This migration involved selecting key experts from various functional areas to work full-time on the project, forming the “Business Ready Team” (BRT) — a group of internal champions that continues driving improvements at Lifetime.

This migration helped Lifetime achieve real-time reporting, better manage warehouse activities, and more. It was crucial in ensuring the company could meet its growing business demands while setting the stage for the adoption of AI tools — specifically, autonomous agents.

Additionally, Lifetime leaned into Microsoft mobile apps and Power Platform, specifically Power BI, to provide its executives with real-time reporting across multiple functional areas. The results have been nothing short of astonishing.

The results: A 95% efficiency lift, and a rebalanced, empowered workforce

The initial Dynamics 365 system drove more than a few critical success metrics: Before implementing Dynamics 365, its overall process efficiency was around 30%, but that quickly improved to around 40%. And with Dynamics 365 Planning Optimization module, Lifetime shortened the planning process from about 24 hours down to just 15 minutes.

The greatest wins came next and through Agentic AI: “Dynamics 365 was working so well, we felt that we could rebalance to optimize employee opportunity,” said Sinahi Lopez, Global IT Functional Manager at Lifetime. “Using AI and autonomous agents is just the next level for us.”

But it wasn’t simply about the workflows: it was about the workforce. With a commitment to continuous learning, Lifetime actively encouraged related Microsoft certifications and technical upskilling. “Exploring the technology deeply and deploying autonomous agents has elevated my team,” said Lopez. “It’s rewarding to see how much people appreciate the time we save them.”

The results speak for themselves: The Lifetime division that automated e-commerce processes realized a 95% efficiency improvement and completely eliminated several manual processes.

Capping off the tremendous success was the roll-out of new mobile tools and Power BI dashboards, which allowed stakeholders to better view the progress being fueled by its technology investments, and to have a clearer picture of the company’s overall health. Changes in forecasting that once took hours now take about five minutes.

“These aren’t IT projects. They’re business-driven initiatives,” said Bowden. “The agents and automations get better over time,” Bowden explained. “You can revisit an area and get a second wave of rebalancing.” And Lifetime projects it should be able to strategically rebalance 20% of its knowledge workforce, not by cutting jobs, but by automating routine tasks and reallocating employees to higher-value roles.

Crucial to the success of Lifetime’s transformation was its partner, Argano. With experience across every element of the Microsoft Stack, Argano was able to both meet Lifetime’s platform and analytics needs, while empowering it to continue rebalancing its workforce and help its team members become ever more successful and critical as the company leaned into Dynamics and Agentic AI.